With U.S. growth at stall speed and the eurozone (EZ) crisis deepening, developed market (DM) central bankers are taking a decided turn toward monetary easing in an effort to once again avoid the perils of a debt-deflation cycle.

Emerging market (EM) central banks, many of which still face elevated inflation risks at home, will delay or abort tightening cycles but will resist monetary easing in the near term as they balance on the horns of the policy trilemma, seeking to retain export competitiveness without stoking inflation.

Over the medium term, continued balance-sheet stress and fiscal austerity in DMs, as well as an impending growth slowdown in China, will push central banks to find new ways of stimulating demand, likely ending the predominant role of inflation-targeting in the global monetary regime.

I recently took two trips to China just as the government launched its 12th Five-Year Plan to rebalance the long-term growth model. My meetings deepened my own impression and the long-standing RGE view of a potentially destabilizing contradiction between China’s short- and medium-term economic performance: The economy is overheating here and now, but China’s overinvestment will prove deflationary both domestically and globally.

This article includes a list of countries of the world sorted by their gross domestic product (GDP), the market value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year. The GDP dollar estimates presented here are calculated at market or government official exchange rates.

The figures presented here do not take into account differences in the cost of living in different countries, and the results can vary greatly from one year to another based on fluctuations in the exchange ratesof the country's currency.

Such fluctuations may change a country's ranking from one year to the next, even though they often make little or no difference to the standard of living of its population. Therefore these figures should be used with caution.